SPORTS OF THE TIMES; Bonds Is the Fall Guy of Spring

By HARVEY ARATON

Published: February 21, 2007

Barry Bonds eased himself into a metal folding chair behind the batting cage that could have been marked ''director'' or ''designated hitter.'' On his first day of spring training, he took a load off his 42-year-old, made-for-American-League knees and seemed to say, ''Listen up people, this is going to be a slog through the long, hot summer.''

He's back with the Giants, here to tie a ribbon around a radioactive baseball era. He begins the final chapter of a story that the sport at large has been wishing would not end on Page 756, with Bonds surpassing Henry Aaron in the history book. But the strong odds (sorry for Las Vegas-speak, but that's where I spent the previous five days) say he will, unless federal authorities improve dramatically and quickly at solving steroid mysteries or Bonds's knees are plotting an 11th-hour twist of their own.

With a pure baseball swing that remains as breathtaking as any in baseball history, he will bear down on Aaron's career home-run record. Just probably not on a schedule that suits those who can't wait for the Bonds watch to end because they can't stomach looking at the reflection of themselves, at what they allowed baseball to become at the end of the 20th century.

''I'll drag it out,'' Bonds said of the home-run chase, playfully but ominously, when he kicked off what could be the most subversive road traveled with the news media of any modern athlete. ''I'll let you guys wait, let you guys talk. The anticipation, the hype.''

And don't forget the hubris.

There is no getting around the fact that Bonds is tough to take -- even on a breezy day when he was trying to be pleasant, and the sounds and smells of spring training were a panacea for someone who had just finished navigating the unavoidable smoke-filled halls of a Las Vegas hotel and casino at the N.B.A.'s All-Star weekend.

That said, all winter long I have found myself bristling at the suggestion that Bonds be banished or the hope that he would voluntarily step aside out of respect for Aaron and the quote unquote integrity of the game.

If his body breaks down or the government intervenes with an indictment in the ongoing Balco investigation, so be it. But quite contrary to the notion that baseball would be much better off if Bonds disappeared, I say the game not only deserves the Bonds denouement, it needs it for the sake of a raised consciousness, for a more sincere understanding of its 1990s greed and neglect.

Bonds didn't start baseball down its pathology of willful ignorance, but only he has power to make those who promoted it and profited from it come to grips with the harm that was done. Only he, in the process of hitting another 22 home runs, can drive home how irresponsible the players' union was for its refusal to distinguish between the recreational drug era and the steroid scourge. Only he can make management recognize how shortsighted it was in going along with the scam until Jose Canseco wrote a book and Congress made a stink.

It is much too easy now to look back to 1998, to Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, and act as if a Hall of Fame vote denied compensates for pretending baseball wasn't lagging years behind other sports in at least admitting that an age of performance enhancement was upon it.

The rush to make Bonds the fall guy for his entire generation has been worse than unfair. It's been uninformative, an attempt to sweep so much scandal under the stadium. Sorry, there is no neat and tidy way to establish closure. The more debate, the better. What does Commissioner Bud Selig accomplish by boycotting Bonds's record-breaking home run, if and when it comes, besides creating the impression that his head remains stuck in the sand?

It happened. It's still happening, albeit without the innocence and denial of 1998. Baseball hasn't succeeded in wishing Bonds away. The government hasn't nailed him yet.

''Let them investigate,'' he said yesterday when the subject was raised. ''Let 'em.''

It was a rare defiant moment on a day when Bonds was even nice enough to members of the news media to contrive an irresistible photo opportunity. He and the Giants' new ace, Barry Zito, came out of the dugout together and posed in matching T-shirts that read on the back, with arrows pointing at one another: ''Don't Ask Me Ask Barry!''

As it turned out, neither Barry, especially Bonds, was interested in the part of the story that was dealt with most comprehensively in last year's best-selling book ''Game of Shadows.'' You want a baseball confessional? Be happy with A-Rod admitting that he and Jeter don't have dinner. Here, when the questions got tough, Bonds got going, pausing to answer one last softball, about the coming 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's breaking baseball's color line.

''I hope baseball celebrates it,'' he said. ''We as a league need to celebrate what's right.''

What he can hope for is that 60 years on, the retrospective on 756 will somehow be more understanding than the reality of 2007, which unofficially began with Bonds hitting a batting practice home run off the right-hander Matt Cain yesterday, turning to reporters and joking, ''I'm ready.''

Ready or not, here he comes. Believe it or not, it's not the end of the world.

Photos: Barry Bonds said, playfully but ominously, that he will drag out his chase of Hank Aaron's home-run record. (Photo by Eric Risberg/Associated Press)(pg. D1); Barry Bonds took some swings during his first day with the San Francisco Giants at spring training. (Photo by Jeff Topping/Reuters)(pg. D3)